ORA Chaeto from BRS, GROSS!

[coreytrv]

Just got some Chaeto from BRS. Algae Barn has nothing in stock, so I went with ORA.

The bag had bugs, eggs, worms, and who knows what stuck to the sides. Poured it into a specimen container, and I couldn't believe how many critters were scurrying about.

So much for clean chaeto. I rinsed it in the sink multiple times and picked as much as I could out of it....is this normal? See the video below for better view.

Do I need to adjust my expectations, or do these vendors need to get with the program?

Here's the link to the video:

 

[smitten with ocean life]

wow! would be interesting to know if they were good critters

 

[BeanAnimal]

Looks like what comes in any ball of macro I have looked at in 20 years.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

To me clean means nothing but Chato, not even parasites such as ich and velvet. You can ask them what their definition of clean is. But if it was me I would request a complete refund and ask BRS why they would sell such garbage.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Looks good to me

 

[Reef By Steele]

From the pictures it is hard to tell, video tiny on my phone. But first picture appears to have some brown stuff in the bag. IMO Cheato seems to grow something like that that I see in my refugiums, but when we started producing it I found it does it in a “clean” environment as well. When we harvest and ship we rinse that away for appearance sake, but then @Ocean_Queenie and I have a vested interest in our products appearance.

In the second photo the critter in the corner is an amphipod. Not uncommon to culture macros with pods and amphipods as they help eliminate nuisance algae.

As for clean, this is to say, grown in a fishless system such that ich and velvet would not be present. We run any new additions at least 90 days in fishless systems before offering it for sale.

If there were worms, although bristle worms and many others are not “bad” we take care to avoid worm of any type in any of our cultures. I would say the Chaeto is safe and useable, just not harvested and prepped to the highest standard.

 

[BeanAnimal]

When I used to give macro away, I shook most of that stuff out and back into the fuge, because I didn’t want to give it away. My baby brittles and worms, stay in my system

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

I haven’t ordered chaeto from Algae Barn but I recently ordered 3 other macro algae and they arrived immaculate.

 

[coreytrv]

Thanks for the replies, the bulk of the responses are:

This is a sales disconnect re: description v. product appearance, but overall, fairly normal in the macro algae trade.